Lina finished drawing number five. Daddy was halfway to the house. His mouth was open.

“He’s roaring for us,” said Lina, “to bake him a nice big cake.”

She erased the top of Mark’s head. His face was still there, and his neck and shoulders and arms. The rest of him was gone.

***

“I can’t write with all that noise!” Mark shouted from the den. Lina and I started laughing and he slammed his door and Mom shouted at us to go to our room. She tried to say something to Mark and he yelled at her, and we couldn’t stop ourselves from giggling as we went upstairs, thump thump thump.

“Double time divided by no time,” said Lina.

Mom came into our room. She looked like everything was falling apart around her and she didn’t know why.

“You rotten kids,” she said, her voice low and shaking.

“Error in the calculation,” said Lina. All the color went out of Mom’s face and she ran to the bathroom, and we heard her throwing up again.

***

Lina had finished picture number six.

Mark’s eyes were gone. His hands were scrabbling in his empty head. His mouth was a perfect circle.

“Zero times zero,” I said, “will always be zero.”

Our two little crayoned figures were jumping up and down. Daddy’s hands were colored in. One more giant step and he’d reach us.

***

“Want to do this together?” asked Lina. She was working on picture number seven.

“Sure,” I said.

Daddy’s foot had touched the ground. It just needed to be colored in.

Mark was gone. Mom’s outline was still just pencil.

Lina tapped it.

“Crayon or eraser?”

“Eraser, please,” I said.

She handed it to me and took a crayon for herself.

“Show-time,” she said.

Sarah Crysl Akhtar’s shtetl forebears gifted her with the genes that impel her to make much from little. So of course she writes flash fiction, cultivates orchards on her windowsill and bakes fabulous shortbread. Her son gives her what’s immeasurable — the best of all possible worlds. (Less miraculous fruit of her labors has appeared on 365tomorrows, Flash Fiction Online and Perihelion SF Magazine, as well as on EDF; her posts on the craft of writing — including reviews of stories selected “From the EDF Archives” — have appeared on Flash Fiction Chronicles.)